Windows 7 Not Booting Up

[Zerio01]

I just recently installed a fresh new installatoin of Windows 7 x64 bit on my computer. When I started up for the first time I let Windows do its thing such as installing drivers for hardware, Windows Update, etc. Now when I restart my computer so that the updates can be in effect, the computer starts up and everything but then it hangs at the "Starting Windows" screen. You just see those words but no Windows logo or anything.

 

[Saltgrass]

How long has it been "hanging"?

 

[Zerio01]

One day I just left it there for a couple of hours and when I come back I still see screen with "Starting Windows" but no logo.

 

[Night Hawk]

You likely saw a bad install of either an update or other startup item. The thing to do now is boot up in safe mode by pressing F8 just as the post tests are ending and go through the msconfig utility's startup tab as well as going into Control Panel>Programs & Features and selecting the show hidden updates option to go through the list in order to find out where the hang up is.

The other possible outcome was seeing a bad install of Windows to begin with. That can happen where you then have to perform an entire new clean install to set things right.

Try disabling or uninstalling a few items like any video or sound updates seen as optional in MS updates. Often a hardware driver will tend to cause locks when it starts loading sideways.

 

[Frostmourne]

A Clean Boot would also be an idea - if Windows boots.

 

[Night Hawk]

With one time instances of a driver hangup a full restart will often see a normal resume until the desktop is reached. With a problematic bad install of something repeat hangs often need to see the item removed and then reinstalled fresh for a normal result.

A bad install of Windows while usually seen when bad ram or worn drive heads is apparent can still occur when no hardware faults are present. Generally when that happens however you may still see the normal desktop but everything ends up having problems.

The solution now is simply to isolate items one at a time if the problem persists in order to rule or confirm where the problem is being seen such as a flaky driver typically a problem or a need to remove one of the updates that may well have seen a bad install. When you are not sure just what is the offender booting up in safe mode to disable startups and remove a few updates as well as device drivers will usually find the source once you see a normall boot that.

Something is causing Windows to hang which does suggest a 3rd party item as the likely item to find there. Drivers for addon devices as well as those for video cards can be a royal pain at times if one loads with Windows and that went on bad. It's always a step by step process especially when you first load up a fresh install of Windows with a number of items all at the same time.

 

[Frostmourne]

If Safe Mode runs without hang-ups, its not 7's fault, the core drivers are fine. I'd run Memtest86+ and a hard drive diagnostic boot cd.

 

[Zerio01]

I have installed different versions of Windows multiple times throughout the last couple of days. I tried installing Vista x32 and x64. After the completion of the installation, the installer will automatically restart your computer. Now when my computer restarts, it will hang at a screen with a little dash blinking several times per second in the top left corner. Now when I try to install XP, you know the part where it says "Setup is analyzing your hardware configuration" or something similar to that, after about 30sec, my computer just restarts.

 

[Zerio01]

Can someone please advice how I would go about trying to find the root of the problem step by step?

 

[theog]

Try this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html?ltr=S

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html?ltr=R

 

[iseeuu]

Can someone please advice how I would go about trying to find the root of the problem step by step?

Zerio01;

If I understand you correctly, you now are not able to install any OS? That would seem to be a hardware issue. What brand of hard drive do you have?

Step one: Go to the Hard Dive maker's web site and download their diagnostic utility. Burn it to a cd, boot to the cd and run the diagnostics. If the hard drive checks OK

Step two: Have the utility write zeros to the hard drive (a reset of sorts) then try to install 7 again.

Cheers!
Robert

 

[seekermeister]

Since Windows hung on the last boot attempt, I'm sure that you had to force restart or shutdown, so on the next attempt, you should be given a menu to choose whether to boot normally or launch the Startup Repair Utility. If yo aren't able to input a choice via the keyboard, it will start automatically, after ~30 seconds. When starting the utility, you may be given a choice of whether to do a System Restore. I'm not certain if that is a good idea or not, so if you are unsure, toss a coin.

With the System Restore, it will probably finish fairly quickly and want to reboot. If that doesn't solve the problem, return to the utility and bypass the System Restore. This will probably take longer to complete. It may announce that it has fixed some problem, but if not, click the details button and see what the log says. Try rebooting again, even if no fix was found, it may have done something even though it said that it didn't.

If it still hangs, return to the utility and run it again, and if it still says that it didn't find the problem, click the advanced options, which presents a list of tools that can be used. Try running the System Restore to a date prior to the last date in the list. Then try rebooting again. If still no joy, back to the utility to try one of the other advanced options, which is hard to say, I haven't had to go that far before.

 

[Night Hawk]

A blinking dash in the upper left corner points to an unbootable drive. Take any new drive without an OS and set that as the default boot device to see the same. Another thing is not leaving the optical drive set as the first in the boot order.